Step 2. Get a job, hippy!

It's snowing. Snow. Not light snow, either. It was dumping earlier today. I was going for a walk and had to turn around. By the time I got to the house, it was so heavy that I couldn't look up from the ground or my glasses would get covered! And, in light of the cold, it is even more important for a person to have a place to live, and to get that, you need an income.

I moved out here for a job that I am really excited about. I am working as the Community Education Co-ordinator at the Fort McMurray Health Promotion Centre. It is also known as the Wood Buffalo HIV/AIDS Society. I am designing and running education modules on topics of sexual health and STI prevention. The workshops are for service providers, teenagers, street people, and other risk groups.

The offices are brightly painted, and packed with staff while we wait for the new facility to open down the street. We can be found right beside the Oil Sands Hotel Exotic Dance Bar. Spiffy, huh? A lot of us staff are new. Eleven of us have been added to the original staff of 4 over the last 3 months. The office is in a major time of transition.

I am really excited to teach modules out of town, in work camps and on reserves. Syphilis and hepatitis C are major problem in the work camps. Reserves deal more with addiction, hep C, and AIDS infections. In town, with high levels of prostitution, drug use, and homelessness, there are high levels of just about every STI and addiction you can think of. The Centre just started a needle exchange, so I am learning a lot about rigs, pipes, and cookers, too.

Other exciting news is that I found out today that I am also the person who teaches kids how to use condoms. Huzza! I talked to one of the ladies in the office and she showed me a whole stack of videos I can refer to, and gave me a few lesson guides.

My work in India is what got me interested in public health in the first place. The stigma of HIV/AIDS was so challenging to fight against. The same is true of Alberta, but the vectors are different. Here, HIV/AIDS is not transferred through unfaithful husbands, but through commercial sex and the drug trade. It is a different scenario, but the same rules apply: people are people first, regardless of the mistakes they have made. And part of the work here is to keep people healthy and safe, that they may have more of a life to live when they learn how to recover.

My job does not pay like an oil job would. But it is exactly the kind of work that I want to be doing. It is meaningful. This position will also help me determine if I want to work in public health long-term. And it doesn't hurt that my co-workers and I have a laugh every once in a while.

But it is cold.